Founder
Ricardo Poupada
Ricardo Poupada founded Sestri Capital to explore new ways of managing family assets and portfolios, starting with his own. He was frustrated with how complex it was to manage all the elements of his holdings. Stock market portfolios, private equity, real estate, accounting, insurance, taxation, there seemed to be an endless amount of management, maximization and integration to make everything work.
Sestri Capital was born out of addressing that need, a multi-year project with a goal of modernizing the approach to how successful individuals & families combine the elements of fulfilling lifestyle goals while managing, investing, and fiscally optimizing their vast array of capital allocations.
Prior to Sestri Capital, Ricardo co-founded AskMen.com, the largest men’s lifestyle website in the world, where he was President/CEO prior to its acquisition by IGN, and months later Fox Interactive Media. In his re-titled role as SVP/General Manager of AskMen.com he was responsible for leading and managing the company’s growth, operations and strategic direction. His responsibilities would later extend to a secondary role also overseeing IGN International, with offices in London and Sydney. This included the international operations of IGN.com and AskMen.com, putting a total audience of 30 million monthly uniques under his purview.
In his leadership role post-acquisition, Ricardo helped AskMen.com triple in audience size, revenue and profits. He oversaw and supported a talented management team across editorial, sales development, SEO, business development, marketing, and engineering departments.
The work to define AskMen’s content footprint and voice, led to innovations in their work with advertisers targeting the highly coveted 18-34 male demographic such as being a pioneer in bringing to market ‘native advertising,’ surpass global audiences of 20 million readers a month solidifying AskMen’s No.1 market share, and expand globally with editions in the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Turkey, Dubai and other countries. AskMen has been recognized by Time Magazine as a ‘Top 50 Site of the Year’ in 2008 and in 2014 won Digiday’s ‘Design Of The Year’ for its innovative re-imagining of the site.
Ricardo was also a contributor to AskMen’s content, in videos or articles, interviewing famous faces such as David Beckham, Hugh Hefner and Kate Upton.
In December 2014, he co-founded angel investment firm Speed of Trust Ventures, extending his active role in angel funding and as a limited partner in iNovia Capital, RPFL-Kensington PE, and Richardson Capital. Ricardo has directly or indirectly as an LP invested in over 80 companies.
In 2016, Ricardo co-founded 5th Wall as CEO, a new digital agency focused on virtual reality, augmented reality and 360 video. From launch 5th Wall was immediately a pioneer and innovator in the VR/AR industry by shooting the largest VR shoot with paid cast ever done on the set of Fifty Shades Darker, the largest AR display project realized in the real estate industry, and the the first ever zero-gravity shoot with Tom Cruise for The Mummy VR Experience.
5th Wall has been to work on a variety of projects and concepts for clients as diverse as Universal Studios, Twitter, CBRE, Manulife, Warner Bros, Montoni, Keurig, American Express, Deloitte, UEFA, Paramount, Videotron, and Desjardins. Introducing new ways of working with AR/VR as a holistic creative, strategic, and production company has helped 5th Wall stand out in across the entertainment, real estate, finance, travel and retail space.
He is a graduate of Concordia’s John Molson School of Business, an active member of Montreal’s Entrepreneur’s Organization (EO) chapter and former board member, a recipient of Montreal Young Chamber of Commerce Entrepreneur of the Year Award in 2005, Click Magazine Top 40 Online Marketers of Canada in 2009, and has been published in Wall Street Journal and Advertising Age. He has numerous interviews and profiles in media outlets such as Media Week, Advertising Age, National Post, Montreal Gazette, LaPresse, Huffington Post, Journal de Montreal, TVA, Global, CTV, CBC, BetaKit, and Mixergy. Ricardo is also a regular conference speaker in the US and Canada, including appearances at Marketing to Men, IAB Canada conferences, NCTA, Crowd Companies, QBits, Infopresse Series & CEO Vision PDG Conference.